Musician Dennis Stroughmatt will present a program at 1 p.m. on
Illinois French Creole heritage, using ancient French folktales,
haunting ballads and foot-stomping fiddle tunes. The Albion native
takes the audience on a fascinating trip through the region known as
the Illinois Country and discusses the importance of preserving the
language and music of the Illinois-Missouri French.

Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette, French missionaries and
explorers, arrived in Illinois in 1673, nearly 150 years before the
region became a state. Their arrival ushered in the French Colonial
period of Illinois history with forts and settlements along the
Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio and Wabash rivers. Early French and
French-Canadian colonists intermarried with Native Americans to
create a unique Creole culture different from the populations of
Louisiana and Canada.

The Jan. 19 program is co-sponsored by the Lincoln Log Cabin
State Historic Site and the Lincoln-Sargent Farm Foundation. It's
produced in part by the Illinois Humanities Council's Road Scholars
Speakers Bureau, a program that provides organizations statewide
with affordable, entertaining and thought-provoking humanities
events for their communities.

The Road Scholars program features topics in history, literature,
music, politics, science and many more.

"The contagious passion our speakers have for their topics is
what makes this program so dynamic and appealing. We don't need to
change lives; we just want audiences to feel curious again," said
Mallory Laurel, the Humanities Council coordinator for the program.

Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, administered by the
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is an 86-acre pioneer
farmstead that was the last home of Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln,
Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother. It is located eight miles
south of Charleston and is open Wednesday through Sunday for free
public tours.